#WhereIsPreki? – Former USMNT’s Preki gone AWOL

Remember Preki? Lots of people do, but nobody can work out where the former USMNT international is. He had been linked with the Leicester City coaching position when it was vacant, but that role has gone to Claudio Raineri. Preki had confirmed he had moved to England in order to take up a coaching role but nothing has been heard since.

The lack of Preki in everyone’s life has meant the #WhereIsPreki trend took of on Twitter thanks to @SoccerMorning and has gone around the world as soccer fans unite to try and track him down. He isn’t in the United States, or Canada. He doesn’t appear to be in England either. An interactive tweet map has been created to help with the search efforts. Many, many Chipotle’s have been checked to no avail.

Preki was last seen in a coaching capacity at Sacramento Republic but left earlier this summer to take up this mythical coaching role in England. According to socceramerica.com, Preki wasn’t too happy with the level of soccer in the United States despite acknowledging its improvement.

“The sport is exploding here, and there is a lot of talent. But we are far away from the Europeans. We are not putting enough attention into developing players. Fundamentally, we are not good enough. Technical ability. Awareness on the field. Tactical ability. The only way we can catch the Europeans is to pay attention to something other than the athletic part of the game, in my opinion. Athletic, athletic, athletic, and not enough football. People want to come watch good football, not just players running up and down the field.”

Preki was born in Europe, but became a US citizen and was capped 28 times for the USMNT scoring 4 goals. He retired in 2005, but went into coaching soon after. He had spells as head coach at Chivas USA and Toronto in MLS before taking up the coaching position at Sacramento for three years starting in 2013 and ending it this year. He left with a win percentage of 62.26% but this was not enough to land him the Leicester job.

There aren’t any vacancies in the 92 team English Football League. League 2 side Mansfield have a player-manager but other than that, there is no head coaching role available. So he would have to settle for an assistant-manager role or as a normal coach. If he doesn’t fancy that he could be off again elsewhere in Europe. Plenty of options.

So, Preki could be anywhere in the world in his quest to find a new coaching role. Who knows, he could still be in the parking lot outside Leicester’s King Power Stadium just in case. Maybe they didn’t even tell him they appointed someone else? Unlikely but nobody has any better ideas right now.